Succulents and More™

Except for a brief heatwave, the weather has been surprisingly mild this June. Still, we’ve reached the time of year when putting new plants in the ground isn’t the best idea. This means that my favorite things to do in the garden (like planting) are on hold until the fall. As I’ve said many times before, summer is my least favorite season, but skipping it isn’t an option, so instead of actively doing stuff, I spend more time observing. With no real projects on the horizon, I’ll probably have more This and that type posts than usual. I actually like them because I can talk about things that wouldn’t necessarily warrant a dedicated post. So, in no particular order.... ALIEN This new arm coming out on this San Pedro cactus reminds me a lot of the chestburster scene in the movie Alien : San Pedro cactus Five days later TRY TRY AGAIN Lewisias are succulents native to dry rocky slopes in subalpine regions of the Western U.S. They’re one of the few succulent genera native to California, an...

Growing cacti from seed is quite easy, but it requires patience. Depending on the genus and species, it may take two, three, four, or even five years for seedlings to grow into flowering-size specimens. I already have well over 100 cactus seedlings in my care, between the German echinopsis hybrids I mentioned recently , other open-pollinated echinopsis hybrids (‘June Noon’, ‘First Light’, and ‘Flying Saucer’), as well as dozens of assorted Astrophytum asterias . If you got tired just reading this, I sympathize. However, I had so many spectacular echinopsis hybrids flower earlier this spring that I decided to harvest seeds from two of them. The first is a German hybrid, Echinopsis ‘Liskes Feuerzauber’ (in the U.S. usually referred to as ‘Magic Fire’). It debuted this year with flowers that blew me away: Echinopsis ‘Magic Fire’ Echinopsis ‘Magic Fire’ Some cacti produce seed pods that dry up and release the seeds when they’ve become brittle. To harvest the seeds, all you have to do i...

In my post about the 2026 San Francisco Succulent Expo , I committed a cardinal sin: I didn’t show my plant haul. Let’s remedy that immediately. I didn’t get a lot because a) I don’t really need more plants (how often have I said that?), and b) little else jumped out at me. Agave utahensis (especially var. eborispina ) is one of my favorite agaves. I found the motherlode on the table of Bay Area grower Mary Parisi: Four beautiful Agave utahensis (three var. eborispina , one var. utahensis ) at a price too good to pass up Priced at $22.50, I couldn’t resist even though I already have about a dozen Agave utahensis The remaining three plants I bought came from the table of San Diego County nursery Botanic Wonders (Al Klein and Anthony Neubauer). They have a well-deserved reputation for impeccably grown plants. Hamatocactus hamatacanthus (left) and yellow-spined form of Ferocactus latispinus (right) Deuterocohnia brevifolia , a mat-forming terrestrial bromeliad from Argentina and Boliv...